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"In the proud tradition of Fanon, Cabral, Malcolm X, and Steve Biko, Jared Ball speaks in the voice of the decolonial Other, offering a much-needed mind transplant to anyone preferring to ignore the liberatory potential inhering in the hip-hop phenomenon of mixtape."—Ward Churchill, author of A Little Matter of Genocide

In a moment of increasing corporate control in the music industry, where three major labels call the shots on which artists are heard and seen, Jared Ball analyzes the colonization and control of popular music and posits the homemade hip-hop mixtape as an emancipatory tool for community resistance. I Mix What I Like! is a revolutionary investigation of the cultural dimension of anti-racist organizing in the Black community.

Blending together elements from internal colonialism theory, cultural studies, political science, and his own experience on the mic, Jared positions the so-called "hip-hop nation" as an extension of the internal colony that is modern African America, and suggests that the low-tech hip-hop mixtape may be one of the best weapons we have against Empire.

Jared A. Ball, PhD, (a.k.a. The Funkinest Journalist) is the host of FreeMix Radio, and associate professor of communication studies at Morgan State University.

Praise for the book:

"Dr. Ball has created a twenty-first century Black radical manifesto that samples and remixes the best of the radical and anti-imperialist tradition. I Mix What I Like! recognizes the colonized nature of contemporary Hip Hop and the colonized context of the people from which Hip Hop emerged. In the tradition of Noam Chomsky and Public Enemy, Jared Ball brings the noise to the status quo and lays out his vision of Mixtape emancipatory journalism as the liberatory mass medium for today and the future. I strongly recommend this work for all those interested in reflecting upon the theory and practice of struggling for social justice in today's America."—Dedrick Muhammad, NAACP and author of Understanding Racial Inequality in the Obama Era

"One way to prevent the appropriation of a revolutionary culture—one that expresses the desires and visions of the oppressed to fight for liberation and self-determination—is to smuggle the word as if it is a liberatory tool, replicating the clandestine, anti-colonial and resistant drum of the maroon. Jared Ball's concept of "mixtape radio" follows that tradition with an irreverence that we so sorely need."—Claude Marks, Freedom Archives